I experienced something new today: an "ice quake." Yeah, I'd never heard of it before either. I was in my campus office when all of a sudden the entire building shook for a couple seconds. My officemate and I were baffled, and everyone on the floor was out in the hall asking what it was. I thought it might have been an explosion from some construction nearby. Nobody knew for sure, so we all went back to work. A few hours later, someone on the hall stops in and tells us that the ice on Lake Mendota cracked, hard enough to shake most of the city. There's a story on it here. I don't know about you, but I think that's pretty cool. One good thing to come from the -30 windchills yesterday.

This is Restaurant Week in Madison, where the super-fancy restaurants offer three-course menus for $25. My friends and I are headed up to Harvest in a few minutes. Be jealous.

I really shouldn't be going, because by 6pm Friday I have to turn in a 3500 word policy analysis suggesting ways the World Health Organization can induce Indonesia to give up its samples of bird flu so a vaccine can be developed. (Indonesia is reluctant to do so because it knows it won't be able to afford the vaccine that comes from their samples, so they're boycotting on equity principles.) We got this project yesterday, giving us 48 hours to research, analyze and write this thing. I'm outing myself as a total nerd by saying I'm actually kind of enjoying it. I like problem-solving! But I love gourmet meals too.

There's really no better welcome back to the Great White North than getting off your bus from the airport at 9:30pm only to realize that the bus to your apartment isn't running because classes aren't in session. Also, it's 20 degrees and snowing. On the plus side, a "warm" spell over the holidays melted most of the three feet of snow that was on the ground. You can see grass in some places! It's amazing!

Of course it's going to snow another 6 inches tonight and tomorrow. Luckily my boss lets me work from home when it snows, which means sitting in my pajamas watching Little House till noon while working on my laptop. Sweet. Things are going to change drastically when classes start. Which is probably a good thing, I've become quite a slug.

I bought four different kinds of cheese at the grocery store, which brings my cheese count to 6 (goat cheese, mozzarella, sharp cheddar, mild cheddar, asiago/parmesan and gruyere). I'm confident it will be up to 8 by next weekend when I get some fontina and bleu from the coffeeshop. In other news, why I've gained 10 lbs since moving here remains a mystery....

Here are some photos of the snow before I left for the holidays.

My neighborhood.


State Street.


Snow piles from half a block of plowing. They have dump trucks that come in and haul the snow away because it won't fit on the sidewalks.

Temperature's fine today (it actually hit the freezing point! Woo!) but the high for the weekend is 1. So I'm putting the WWTL at orange.